At the end of the day I love service alternatives. They value their employees and try to make it reasonable to work there. Their hands are tied and can't pay much, but provide NEEDED work to our foster youth. As an entry level job, its worth it. If you're looking for career advancement go somewhere else.

Pros

paid trainings, phone and mileage reimbursement, good work environment

I love working at Service Alternatives. I've had jobs that paid more, but those people didn't care about me. My current supervisor is supportive and understanding. She knows my family comes first and that means a lot to me. My schedule is flexible, pay is decent, I don't utilize benefits. When it came time to make a choice between money and happiness it was easy for me. I make enough to manage and my work life balance is amazing. I don't take work home, I am not stressed. I have been with Service Alternatives for 6 years and don't plan on leaving anytime soon. The values the company upholds are shown throughout each day.

Stressful environment with many demands. Management is lacking and covering up the misspending of grants and funding. A typical day consists of managing a caseload, emergency/crisis situations, exposure to illegal drugs, mandatory meetings, and maybe a 5 minute break for lunch.

I worked with a lot of different people trying to help them improve their quality of life. If i could go back i would in a heart beat. Great managers and very helpful individuals that work there. Lots of opportunity for advancment within the company.

As a caregiver many things are required of you to succeed in this company. You must have a lot of patience, strong authority so that the children know they cannot manipulate you. Paying attention to detail as well is very important because most of the job is to write down accurately and also administer correct information and medication to the children.

This job is perfect for someone whom like working with youth, enjoys helping and guiding them to build skillful resecpt and helping them through many different areas that they may need help. The job is fun and ever changing, some days you have 2 youth someday you have 6. Working here always puts a smile on my face. The job is fun, enjoyable and sometimes challenging but the end goal is always great. This job takes lots of patience and selfcare to be sure you are always up for the days tasks. You always have to think of safety 1st. So if you are driven by helping and supporting youth from all walks of life and behaviours this is perfect.As for support our Resdiental coordinator, case managers and program manager are always there. The staff are great and it's like a strong family working for one goal.

Pros

Staff are amazing, always work to do, always something different never the same thing everyday

I have nice things to say about the people I work with.The Program Manager is a patient person who seems to emphasize education over discipline.The Residential Coordinator is very direct about what is expected and gives you opportunities to learn how to best manage your time.

I enjoy the solitude of the overnight shifts, and the short amount of time I am working with youth in the mornings when getting them up for school.

We get a pretty regular turn around of teenagers who come into and leave our program.

Loved working for this company only issue was that the standards were changing from month to month on how to prepare paperwork and forms and there was no real coaching on how to properly fill out forms reports throughout the company what was good and correct in one division was not so in another.

Pros

great co-workers and clients, good hours

Cons

health care benefits were not great and standard changed changed from location to location.

Working directly with individuals with multiple disabilities was a rewarding challenge.Working with managers not so rewarding.Lots of scams go on in this type of employment regarding the actual value that clients get for the money paid for client services. As I progressed towards employing my clients-my workload doubled. The employer did not appear to be really interested in putting individuals into real jobs-but were instead dragging out training to receive more financial rewards from DSHS instead.I resigned after discovering the trend and fraud to not help clients excel-but to keep the finances rolling in from client families-some over 21 years.

A typical day at work consisted of answering phone calls, assisting program managers and staff with any questions they may have in regard to company policies or pay. I was the first contact to the region for social workers, case managers and licensors as well as internal staff and management. My duties were to maintain the income for the contracts held with the state of Washington for the children that we cared for as well as paying all utilities and repairs for the program homes that the children were residing.

Pros

Loved the people I worked with. Great group

Cons

Because of the turnaround of administrators, expectations became extremely variable.

Every day I was at work there was a new challenge which made it so much fun. I can't say that all of the challenges were fun at the time, but I can say after each challenge was the feeling of knowing that I could survive it.There were days which were extremely difficult such as one of the kids would go off and become physically aggressive towards myself or other staff, kids that would run away or try to, kids destroying property, oh and the name calling, kids with drug and alcohol abuse issues, kids who had been abused and dealing with the abuse issues was very difficult. We had them all.I did daily med counts, medication distributions, room searches was also a daily requirment, performed daily living skills activities with the kids, daily charting, worked with educators, social workers, parents.There just was never any down time you were continuously on the move, which made it even better because time would fly by.I do have to say the best thing about my job was watching how the kids changed over time and no matter how little the change was it was always a positive change.

Pros

all of the kids i worked with, the great co workers, all of the education and training

Cons

the high volume of turnover in employees due to the high stress type of work, most were not prepared for all of the different areas which they faced.